With the exception of a 30-minute session on a hotel elliptical, I haven’t done a workout in ten days. That’s not a terrible break, but it’s ill-advised. I’m just three weeks from the 5K, and I need to be gauging if I’m going to sign up for the Deception Pass HM. Instead, I’ve been a sloth. Continue reading →

This is the week of Thanksgiving. We’ve purchased all the groceries (although I can tell already I’ll need to buy more potatoes). No one is joining us on Thursday; we’re planning to head west to visit family – and deliver leftovers – on Friday. This takes some of the pressure off, but I still have a lot to do this week. I need to make several pies Tuesday evening. Tonight’s NFL game may be a preview of the Super Bowl. I need to fry up sausage and make cornbread for one batch of stuffing. (I do a cornbread stuffing and a white bread stuffing.) Continue reading →

We’ve just shifted our clocks back to standard time, and at this latitude that means the sun is setting as I’m leaving work. That complicates my workout schedule. It didn’t when I was training for the Badger Mountain Challenge, as I was still willing to run on pavement. Since I’m avoiding pavement as much as possible, I found myself debating what to do. The Hubs really doesn’t want me running alone at Chamna in the dark (I will refrain from telling him that I have in the past). That leaves me with Badger and the 5K cross-country course in Pasco. I’d rather not run Badger unless I’m specifically doing hill work — this crafty gal has included no hill work in her training schedule — and the Pasco 5K course is really soft. That’s okay for cadence workouts but it’d suck for a tempo workout in which I’m trying to maintain a specified pace.  Continue reading →

Last night was a cadence interval workout, and I nailed it. As in, “damn, girl — you fast!” nailed it. I’ve upped my minimum cadence during the intervals, and over the course of the workout (15 one-minute intervals) I averaged a minimum cadence of 177 spm.

I also think I’ve figured out the course of the Kim’s Bad Knee 5K. This route came in at the perfect distance. I’d like it to be more winding, but I don’t know if I can create a winding route that doesn’t backtrack over previously-trod paths; more importantly, I don’t know if I can re-create that route for the race course. The route I did last night is repeatable, and it’s got a lot of crazy single-track twists. Continue reading →

I’m finding training for a 5K both easy and frustrating. Continue reading →

Over the spring & summer, I managed to regain nearly all of the ten pounds I lost last fall & winter. I just wasn’t working as hard, and I certainly wasn’t paying enough attention to my diet — and it’s always more fun to put on weight than to take it off. Now that my backpacking is mostly done for the season, it’s time to go back to working on my body. Continue reading →

Dried out, recharged, I headed back out to the Pacific Crest Trail. I didn’t start until about 3:30 Thursday afternoon. I wish I’d gotten on the trail earlier, but I managed to get a fair number of chores done before I left. Also, if I’d been on the trail earlier, I wouldn’t have camped where I did Thursday night, and that means I wouldn’t have seen the bear Friday morning.  Continue reading →

Things I learned from this weekend’s hike: Continue reading →

As always, you are invited to find humor in my failure.  Continue reading →

Trail Magic is REAL.

Trail magic is what trail angels do. Thru hikers talk a lot about trail angels, because they make the hard work of thru hiking easier. I talked about Barista in an earlier post – that was my first introduction to trail magic on the Pacific Crest Trail. There was trail magic throughout last weekend’s hike.  Continue reading →